I am very dissatisfied with those who only look at the current state of Ethereum and think that Ethereum should prioritize scaling L1 (first layer solutions). The entire Ethereum ecosystem is in a stage of rapid development, and the view that only scaling L1 is ridiculous.
What happens if we choose to extend L1?
The current L1 expansion capability is insufficient: the transaction processing speed (TPS) on Ethereum L1 may be only 50-100, which is far from meeting the demand.
Rollup teams will look for other options: Current Rollups can use Ethereum as an implementation of data availability (DA). If Ethereum only scales L1, these teams may turn to other alternatives.
Reduced contributions to the Ethereum and EVM ecosystem: We won’t see hundreds of Rollup teams contributing to Ethereum.
The marketing effect of the Ethereum ecosystem will be greatly weakened: L2 projects will act independently, and if Ethereum abandons them at a critical moment, why should they stay?
Losing the most valuable allies: Despite funding a lot of ZK and Rollup research in the past, Ethereum will essentially push these allies away.
Current L2 Ecosystem Advantages
Multiple consensus and execution client teams: Ethereum is the most decentralized public blockchain, with 7 clients accounting for more than 10% of the total.
Active Rollup Chains: Multiple Rollups such as Base and Arbitrum continue to break their own records, attracting billions of locked value (TVL) and millions of users.
Ethereum-centric L2s such as Immutable have attracted hundreds of game studios and millions of gamers.
Account abstraction wallet: Provide sponsored meta transactions through Immutable passport or infinex, which is not easy to achieve on L1.
Cheapest L1 gas fees: The introduction of EIP-4844’s blobs frees up space for more meaningful transactions.
Ethereum’s Future Outlook
Everything Ethereum is doing right now is exactly what we've been hoping to see in the last 3-4 years as the best possible protocol outcome. While L1 can also have some improvements, too much criticism would make it seem like we're just making excuses because the price has met expectations. If you told me 3-4 years ago what Ethereum would be like now, I can't imagine it being in a more solid position.
Now we can discuss what to do next. Going further down the Rollup route might not be a good idea, or we should focus on fixing the fragmentation problem. In any case, Ethereum and its entire ecosystem are still developing rapidly, thousands of teams are scaling this behemoth in parallel, and nothing can stop it from achieving greater victories.
